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"The Snows of Kilimanjaro" is slightly better, but still by no means as good as it should be, given its stellar cast.

Selznick's version of "A Farewell to Arms", although attractively photographed, are two of the dullest and most slow-moving films ever committed to celluloid. The Gary Cooper/Ingrid Bergman "For Whom the Bell Tolls" and David O. The works of Ernest Hemingway have not always translated well to the cinema. Hemingway purists might shun A Farewell to Arms, but those who love their screen romances, soggier the better will rave about this film. Soon he would sign a long term contract with MGM and gain his greatest roles during the sound era. Menjou was great at playing both American and continental types. Adolphe Menjou replete with Italian accent plays Cooper's friend and romantic rival, Major Rinaldi. But she never became a movie box office draw so she returned to the Broadway stage where she reigned as a Queen. Helen Hayes made several good films in the early thirties, this one and the one she won an Oscar for, The Sins of Madelon Claudet. DeMille who returned to the studio he helped found. But Paramount's saviors turned out to be Bing Crosby, Mae West, and Cecil B. The studio nearly went under during the Depression. But Adolph Zukor and Paramount also knew what sold movie tickets and Paramount was having a lot of financial troubles at this time. Cooper and Helen Hayes made a tender romantic couple in the Borzage tradition, probably more Borzage than Hemingway. He saw in Cooper the ideal Hemingway hero and when Paramount acquired the rights to For Whom the Bells Toll, Hemingway insisted it be done with Cooper or nobody. He and Coop became fast friends right up to when they both died in 1961. The one thing that Hemingway did like was the casting of Gary Cooper as the hero Fredric Henry. A Farewell to Arms is definitely in keeping with that tradition. Borzage did a whole slew of tender romantic stories in the Thirties like Three Comrades, The Mortal Storm, stuff like that. If he did just knowing Frank Borzage directed this film should have told him something. When Papa Hemingway said that he obviously did not know Hollywood well at all. They turned his novel and put too much emphasis on the romance angle. When this version of A Farewell to Arms came out, Ernest Hemingway hated this film.